Othello

We spent time is class last Thursday in groups laying out what we thought the scene would be for the final act of the play Othello.  Above is a picture that I found online that resembles the one my group drew.  I thought this was a very interesting exercises.  Each group had a different interpretation of how the furniture laid out and what was included or not.  Each group also had different takes on the lighting and music, which sets the mood, for their scene.  After listening to the groups explain their layouts we were asked to watch the scene on YouTube and then next class we watched a more modern take of it.  I was interesting to see how the scenes my classmates and I laid out compared to the two film takes.  There were many creative differences between the two films and even more between the films and our drawings.  It is fascinating how many different interpretations there are for one scene.  The scene is written out, but how the directors decide to have them play out on screen was different.  Lines were cut out, angles were taken by the camera, lighting was done, and music was played in the background.  All of these lead to very different outcomes.  How can there be so many different takes on one piece of writing?  The writing doesn't change.  The language is the same for every person that reads it.  It boggles my mind how different each person's take is.  I have to wonder why this is.  All I can come up with is people see different events in different ways.  Certain events provoke certain emotions in people and it was the emotions of the directors of the films that were portrayed in the two different Othellos.